Blog: Trending Over Last Month

Here at Social Strata we see cryptocurrencies as the future of money. While we are a long way from mass adoption, we want to do our part in facilitating its use. Thus, we're pleased to announce that we will now accept cryptocurrency for Hoop.la service fees, as an optional payment type. The following cryptocurrencies will be accepted: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Stellar, Monero, and Litecoin. We will not charge a premium for paying by crypto. Note that we do not accept crypto for FeePod...

As we announced recently , today, June 5th, we are moving all remaining Hoop.la communities to HTTPS in order to protect the integrity of them all. We are pleased to announce the conversion process has now been completed! All internal Hoop.la links have been converted to HTTPS automatically. If your community includes any resources that are not secure, browsers will display an insecure warning. You will need to manually update these resource links to use HTTPS, which could include images,...

We live in a world where artificial, automatic responses are facilitated by all sorts of technology. Automatic Tweet replies, pop up support chat invitations on websites...even "Tom" over at MySpace. These are all meant to make life easier...

Here at Social Strata, we are always looking for ways to increase security for our customer communities, and today we are announcing a new offering to allow our customers to use HTTPS (i.e. "SSL") at no conet

Today I'm so happy to share a great Q&A session with Colin Armstrong, who spearheaded the recent launch of a Hoop.la community for Walgreens Boots Alliance. The new YourGoodSkin(TM) brand leverages an innovative approach, deeply involving thousands of women in the creation and development of the skin care line itself. How does online community figure into the YourGoodSkin brand story? The whole brand ethos of YourGoodSkin is that it has been, and will continue to be, co-created by women.

As you may (or may not) be aware, the EU last year passed a strong set of guidelines aimed at protecting individual data privacy rights. Those guidelines are called “GDPR,” or General Data Protection Regulation, and they apply to any entity who collects or processes identifiable data from EU citizens (in short, almost everyone). There are a few primary principles: Users must be notified specifically whenever data is being collected from them. Users have the right to delete or export the data...

Social networks can be depressing . Scrolling through a "feed" is a self-reinforcing loop, and you're being "fed" the pieces of content with which the algorithm has determined you will engage. You spend your time scrolling, occasionally flicking a reaction or typing a quick comment, feeling inferior because it's not your birthday, you didn't eat at Ruth's Chris last night, and your 2.5 beautiful children haven't won the gymnastics competition. Sometimes there will be a random, intrusive...

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ve probably heard of GDPR by now (or at least been barraged by emails notifying you of privacy policy changes from everyone you’ve ever contacted). Here at Social Strata, our main goal is to give you the tools you can use to comply with new regulations, if they apply to your community. Back in the days of the US COPPA regulation, we provided a mechanism so that you could age-check and obtain parental consent, and with GDPR we’ve followed a similar...

As many of you know, we recently migrated all Hoop.la sites to SSL . One consequence of switching to SSL is that some Social Network integrations may need to be updated. This is due to OAuth callback URLs which are registered for each Social Network and are used to validate the authenticity of requests made through the various APIs that enable these features. Since each Hoop.la customer controls their own Social Network integrations, you must fix the issue if it applies to your site. If you...

Facebook has recently changed their OAuth authentication requirements by enabling “ Strict Mode ” for all consumers. What this means, is that if your community is using Facebook as a linked Social Network, then that integration with Facebook will no longer work until you have met their requirements. For all site owners who have not integrated Facebook as a Social Network for your members, please allow your eyes to haze over and move on with your day. Perhaps throw on some music and get a...

Lately I've been getting a lot of questions about how online communities differ from social networks--why a Hoop.la site is different from, say, a Facebook page. It can definitely be confusing if you're a marketer trying to figure out where to invest...

Here at Social Strata, the security of our customers and their visitors is paramount. Last October we published a blog post about our offer of free Let's Encrypt certificates so that our customers can add TLS (previously known as SSL) to their Hoop.la communities, as there are several security advantages in doing so. The response was amazing, with a significant amount of customers taking that offer. Now, starting June 5th, we are proactively moving all Hoop.la communities to HTTPS in order...

Batman and Robin. Dr. Evil and Number 2. Snooki and JWoww. Every successful relationship needs a leader and a loyal, trusted sidekick. This is how the online community manager and the moderator work together to build a healthy...

Marketers sometimes like to make up acronyms for really simple things---for example, they say "KPI's" instead of "how we measure success." KPI stands for Key Performance Indicators, and they are metrics used to help an organization...

It's a new year, and that can only mean one thing. We have all tossed the clothes off the handles of our treadmills and are looking for good stuff to listen to while we meet those fitness goals. You're in luck, because I've found some podcasts that are specifically created for community managers. The Community Signal podcast is fairly new, but its host, Patrick O'Keefe, is an "OG" community manager. The podcast is nicely produced, and Patrick has access to great guests from around...

Many online community platforms (including Hoop.la) offer the ability to form smaller groups within the larger community. But as with any feature, you should make an informed decision as to whether it suits your particular...

Today I have another addition to your Hoop.la community bag of tricks. For this example I'm using USTREAM, but there may be other similar services that will accomplish the same thing. Essentially, anything that has an embed code available...

We quietly added some new features to Hoop.la over the past week or so and some of these are fairly major. 1. More Control Over Member Data We added a new setting in the control panel that allows admins to determine whether to allow...

In yesterday's Hoop.la release, we added a cool little feature that makes it easier to export forum topics for further analysis. Download Topic Data as CSV In all forum topics, you'll now see an option on the right side to get a CSV file for...

Today, I'm proud to offer an interview with Coach Gary Trousdale, someone who is hustling on behalf of kids, and using the Hoop.la community platform to create a special online gathering place for his team. Be sure to check out his great site at...

We're very excited to announce the launch of a new service today- UBB Forum! UBB Forum is a scaled down version of our Hoop.la service, designed for sites that want a community that is completely focused on forums. Our company...

Your community members are pretty awesome. Have you ever wanted to give them a visual reward for being so awesome? Hoop.la supports admin-editable profile fields, so you can create a Badge profile field and add flair to any member's profile instantly. (Those admin-editable fields can be used for private information too, like internal customer IDs or other "flags" you might want to put on your members.) First, create your beautiful badge graphic. Next, go to your control panel and click...

Anyone running an online community for business purposes should take the time to put together a formal business plan for the community. Even if you never share it with anyone else, it will help you figure out (in advance,...

Online communities with paid (premium) memberships can be some of the most thriving, active communities on the web. It may seem counterintuitive; after all, can't you just go to Facebook for free? Yes, you can just go to Facebook for free,...

We have a special treat today; an interview with NY promoter, writer, and creative force of nature Chi Chi Valenti. She presides over two bustling communities: Motherboards NYC and Queenmother.TV, both powered by Hoop.la. Growing her...

Happy Thanksgiving to those who are celebrating tomorrow! We are thankful for our extended Social Strata family and cyber-friends. For your enjoyment, here are 5 ways an online community is like Thanksgiving dinner: Every community has...

Are you looking for something new and different to do with your online community? Set up a virtual talent show. Bonding experiencesIn high school, I made a frightening attempt to sing an Andrews Sisters song with two of my...

On Facebook over the last couple of weeks, everyone has been sharing a list of "10 Concerts" they've attended. The idea is to include one red herring concert in the list and see if your friends can guess which is the fake one. It was an innocuous little game, very similar to other list-sharing games like "25 things you might not know about me," which made the rounds a few years ago. However this one seemed to strike a chord. Why do some conversation-starters take off like wildfire, while...

You've got a core group of early members, and the first inklings of a community, but it's a small batch of embers that you'd like to gently blow on to create a roaring fire. If you blow too forcefully (ie, start posting like a maniac yourself),...

We'll be using our fax machine as a planter now. Or perhaps a really ugly doorstop. As of today, Social Strata will start using RightSignature to process contracts and service agreements. We're hoping that accepting digital signatures will...

Over the last several months, we've instituted a fun method of shaking down new code releases. We refer to it as a "swarm test," and it is basically a "bring your own laptop" group critique. Developers, marketing, accounting, anyone who...

As part of the recent Sets and Collections Release , Hoop.la no longer supports Facebook feed integration on member profile pages. The purpose of the feed integration on member profile pages is to provide a unified snapshot of a particular member's social activity across both Hoop.la and other social networks like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. It makes it easy to see, at a glance, a particular member's recent photos on Instagram, tweets on Twitter, etc. Over the years, Facebook has...

She's running a community of practice with a very important mission. Jane Stevens is the Founder/Editor of ACEsConnection.com , a thriving community of practice aimed at preventing Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), and changing...

Today, we bring you an in-depth interview with Lynda Mitchell, an outstanding role model if you're interested in how to build a thriving community and make the world a better place at the same time. She is the founder of Kids with Food Allergies...

We've rolled out an update for Hoop.la that focuses on supercharging the member profile pages, allowing your community members to have a much richer identity on your site. As mentioned before, we've been working on a major update to this area for...

This Ad Age article caught my eye today: http://adage.com/digitalnext/a...le?article_id=143372 It's an elegant summary of "influencer" activity across multiple social media platforms. The article mentions discussion forum posts as an area where...

We've rolled out an update for Hoop.la that focuses on some enhancements for media uploads and sets/collections in Hoop.la. Here are the major changes: New 'Post Clips' and 'Upload Attachments' Permissions Previously, you could use permissions to control the types of media files that a user could upload to your site (photos, videos, etc.), but admins had no way to control clips in general or attachments in general. Now you can, with the new permissions for "Post Clips" and "Upload...

This week, we are rolling out a Hoop.la update that adds the following new features: 1. Integration with Pinterest . Pinterest is a new supported Social Network that you can enable for social sign-ins, as well as to allow users to display their own Pinterest pins on their member profiles. 2. Admin-Only Custom Profile Fields Administrators can set private profile fields that only they can set and access via a new "Hidden" option. The members themselves would not see these admin-only fields.

There are sports fans, and then there are sports fans. Henry Witt and his crew at SuperCentex.com are super sports fans. It isn't often that you get to do a deep-dive with someone who has been developing community for 11 years, so...

We're in the home stretch now for our gigantic Responsive Design update for Hoop.la , UBB Forum , and QuestionShark , which we have talked about here and here . Because there are so many changes, we will be placing copies of customer sites onto...

Would you like a peek behind the scenes at how to launch a customer engagement program at one of America's largest cable companies? This week, I'm happy to share some key insights from Phil Brenner, Director, Customer Experience at Time...

Remove From Your Block List

Manage Follow Preferences

Block

When you block a person, they can no longer invite you to a private message or post to your profile wall. Replies and comments they make will be collapsed/hidden by default. Finally, you'll never receive email notifications about content they create or likes they designate for your content.